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Momentus XT hybrid drive causing headaches, Seagate working to fix
All's not well in hybrid solid state storage land, as owners of Seagate's Momentus XT are facing serious issues with their drives -- despite glowing initial reviews, a number of long-term users claim that the drives chirp, crash, stutter, and freeze with alarming regularity, particularly when installed in a Mac. Seagate forumgoers speculate these are symptoms of the XT's magnetic platters spinning down inappropriately, due to an overzealous power management scheme. That's the bad news -- and it sounds pretty bad -- but the good news is this: Seagate's owning up to the issues, and is actively involved in getting them fixed. So far, a pair of new firmware updates have addressed some symptoms, a third is on the way, and a Seagate engineer known only as STX_NB is proactively chatting with affected customers about possible fixes. That's what we call technical support -- take notes, tech companies.
Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard drive review
Earlier this year, Seagate promised to flip the 2.5-inch HDD industry upside-down, but it wouldn't do so by using an SSD in sheep's clothing. Rather, it'd be doling out a new breed of hard drive, one that actually has a pinch of pure, unadulterated NAND inside for picking up the pace in certain scenarios. The idea of a hybrid hard drive isn't totally new, but the Momentus XT is one of the first hybrid HDDs to actually make it out of the lab and into the hands of consumers. The most intriguing aspect of the drive is the price -- at around $130, it's just under half as pricey as Seagate's conventional 500GB Momentus 7200.4. That uptick in price isn't nothing, but it's still far less than what you'd pay for a 2.5-inch SSD with half the capacity. We've already shown you the benchmarks, so we figured we'd slap this bad boy in our main rig for a few weeks to see if we actually noticed any real-world performance increases to justify the cost. Head on past the break for our two pennies. %Gallery-99124%
Seagate pairs 7200RPM HDD with 4GB of NAND in 2.5-inch Momentus XT hybrid drive
Just as we surmised, Seagate is taking the wraps off its new hybrid drive, with OEM shipments of the Momentus XT starting today. Hailed as the fastest 2.5-inch laptop drive on the planet, this here device marries a 7200RPM hard drive (250/320/500GB) with 4GB of SLC NAND flash memory and 32MB of cache, and the company's Adaptive Memory technology allows it to store frequently used information on the latter for ultra-speedy access. It can boot up to 100 percent faster than a conventional 5400RPM hard drive, and thankfully for us all, it utilizes a standard 9.5mm-high form factor that the vast majority of laptops use. Seagate also affirms that the drive "operates independently of the operating system and the motherboard chipset," but we're going to hold tight until we see the first real benchmarks (it'll soon be an option in ASUS' ROG G73Jh gaming laptop) before getting all hyped up. In related news, the outfit also announced the world's highest capacity 7200RPM drive at 750GB, with the Momentus 750GB boasting SATA 3Gbps support, an NCQ interface, 16MB of cache and "silent acoustics." No price is mentioned, but you can bet a hefty premium will placed on something this capacious. The full presser, another image and a specs sheet awaits you beyond the break. Update: The reviews are already pouring in, and at just $155 for the 500 gigger, it's receiving a fair amount of praise.
Seagate's 'game-changing' storage tech coming to ASUS ROG G73Jh laptop
Well, well -- what's this? Wouldn't you like to know. What it is, fine people, is the "device that becomes you, so you become faster." Seriously, that's the teaser line that Seagate's feeding the press this fine morning, inviting us to join the company as it reveals the next "game-changing" device meant to boost system performance by a staggering 150 percent. Judging by the image above and the fact that ASUS' ROG G73Jh gaming laptop will be first to house it, we're guessing it's a breed of SSD this world has never seen. We're told that the mystery product will be 20 percent quicker than a 600GB 10,000rpm SATA drive, 80 percent faster than a conventional 7200rpm HDD and able to boot "within six seconds of an SSD drive." It'll also be able to "learn about its user to dynamically decrease disk time, boot time, and application load time," and if you're lucky, it may just cleanse that work coat of yours, whip up a nutritious breakfast and convert your clunker into a hovercraft. We'll be finding out a lot more come May 26th -- till then, try not to gnaw your nails past the cuticle. Update: Sounds like Seagate may finally be ready to launch that "pie in the sky" mutant hybrid SSD technology that we first caught wind of back in 2008. Dare we say, the Momentus XT Hybrid? Thanks, Sneakz and Khattab! [Thanks, Michael]
Seagate's Momentus Thin to ship in 160GB / 250GB sizes this January
We weren't waiting on too many more details surrounding Seagate's 7mm thin laptop hard drive, but one critical tidbit has just now been unearthed by the outfit itself. The Momentus Thin will make its official unveiling at CES here in just a few weeks, where it'll be available in 160GB and 250GB capacities and with 8MB of cache, a 5400RPM spin speed and a SATA 3Gbps interface. We're also told that it'll be far less expensive than similarly sized 1.8-inch HDD options, which means this bugger could soon be planted into Atom D410 / D510-based netbooks. The drive is slated to ship to OEM and integrator partners next month, though specific price points have yet to be mentioned. Have a peek at the first press shots below. %Gallery-80243%
Seagate's 7mm Momentus Thin 2.5-inch hard disk for slim, high-capacity laptops: a world's first
Any advancement in commercial storage is big news 'round here so we're stoked to learn of a new ultra-thin hard disk from Seagate meant to slake our jones for super-slim portable computing. Seems that Seagate's already sampling a 7-mm high disk as part of its Momentus Thin series of drives scheduled to be launched at CES in January. Impressive, especially when you consider that just about every 2.5-inch SATA disk we cover measures in at 9.5-mm high. Although Seagate doesn't give specifics, we assume the drive will be spinning a single platter. And knowing that dual-platter 2.5-inch disks currently max out at 640GB (or 320GB per platter), we expect Seagate to at least match that single-platter capacity, but probably improve upon it via a boost in areal density. Feel free to offer your guess in comments until all is revealed on January 5th.
Seagate announces larger, faster AES-packing Momentus hard drives
Today's corporate laptops tend to be bristling with security measures, able to uniquely identify your fingers and faces on top of whatever authentication measures your operating system offers. But, without some kind of encryption, the drives inside are left completely vulnerable to anyone with a screwdriver. Seagate has been combating that with its AES-packing Momentus Full Drive Encryption disks for years, finally updating the range with a suite of larger and faster models. The first is the Momentus 5400 FDE.3, a 5400RPM drive with 8MB of cache available in 160GB and 320GB sizes. There's also the Momentus 7200 FDE, coming in the same two capacities but with twice the cache and, predictably, spinning at 7200RPM. Seagate's promising 500GB flavors soon, all with onboard AES encryption that doesn't impact boot times or overall performance. Just don't forget that BIOS password, yeah?
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11: 1.5TB of love
You know, we're not actually certain we want to trust 1.5TB of our precious precious NES ROMS invaluable work data to a single drive, but that doesn't mean Seagate's latest Barracuda isn't droolworthy regardless. The jump from 1TB to 1.5TB is the "largest capacity hard drive jump in the more than half-century history of hard drives," according to Seagate, and the perpendicular-recording drives should begin shipping in August. There are also a pair of Momentus 2.5-inch 500GB notebook drives coming in Q4 in 5400 and 7200RPM speeds, but like big brother, pricing is unavailable -- we've got a hunch you might want to start saving those pennies, though.[Thanks, Dave]
Dell's XPS M1730 first laptop with 7,200RPM 320GB disk
While Fujitsu and Hitachi may have announced first, Seagate is first to commercialize its new 7,200RPM, 320GB SATA disk with 16MB cache. The Momentus 7200.3 with G-Force free-fall protection is now available as an option on Dell's "XPS laptops" -- at the moment, it appears limited to the XPS M1730 for a $46 premium over the 320GB 5,400RPM spinner. Alienware laptop rigs should see the new HDD option soon enough.
Seagate launches first laptop HHD -- blames Vista drivers for poor performance
Finally, Seagate has joined the fray by shipping its first hybrid hard drive (HHD) to OEMs and thus making good on its pledge to the Hybrid Storage Alliance. The 2.5-inch Momentus 5400 PSD ships in 80-, 120-, and 160GB capacities with a SATA 1.5 interface, 8MB of cache, and 256MB of flash memory to buffer cached write requests to disk. Seagate's HHDs are said to reduce boot time from 40 to 32 seconds while cutting average power consumption from 0.78 to 0.45 watts. Not quite the hysterical orders of performance improvements and battery savings originally promised eh Microsoft, Samsung? According to Melissa Johnson, a Seagate product manager, the sub-par performance for all HHDs stems from first generation issues with both the BIOS and Vista device drivers, "they don't know how to utilize the flash." Oh dear.[Via Extreme Tech]
Seagate ships 3 Gbps Momentus 7200.2 notebook HDD
While we were all prepared to wait for Fujitsu's May release of its MHW2 BJ series, Seagate decided to swoop in for the kill with the Momentus 7200.2. It's already shipping this comprable 2.5-inch laptop HDD with a 3 Gbps SATA interface (doubled from 1.5 Gbps in the last version). The new Momentus spins itself silly at 7,200 rpm, sports perpendicular recording technology, and is available in 80GB, 100GB, 120GB, and 160GB capacities. So if you're itching for a bite-size speed demon HDD for your laptop, your wait is over -- unless you're a Fujitsu snob, in which case you'll have to sit tight for a couple more months.
Seagate launches updated version of drive encryption
There's nothing like starting the week with a little encryption, eh? Seagate has just announced an update to its hardware-based built-in drive encryption. Previously, the company had brought Full Disk Encryption to its Momentus 5400.2 mobile drive. This new update ships with 128-bit AES and a "faster serial advanced technology attachment interface." Essentially, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, all data traveling to or from the disk will be encoded and decoded by the encryption chip. However, there's one little problem, as Scott Shimomura, senior product marketing manager for Seagate, told the Chronicle: "If the password has been lost to the drive, then, yes, the drive becomes unusable." That means all your data. Consumers should expect to pay a $100 or less per drive premium for the privilege and should see the updated drives on shelves in the beginning of 2007.[Via CIO, illustration courtesy The San Francisco Chronicle]
